Cursed Cursive

 'I just hate sitting and writing.  I had to do that in school.  Plus I have terrible handwriting.' -Saul Kripke

Last month, my parents came out while my sister and her family were up for a hockey tournament my nephew played in.  My parents were nice enough to empty their basement of totes of my old stuff.  It was just four or five totes, but they decided since I live just a ten hour car ride away, that I needed to have these in my house.  This is a little bit of bullshit because my sister lived in the same town and yet she had totes in the basement for years and years.  It took her moving to Missouri to get them out of the basement.  Last night, my wife and I went through and weeded some stuff out.  During this fun expedition into my childhood, we found a bunch of my report cards from elementary school.  One thing was constant throughout all the years kindergarten through fifth grade.  My handwriting was (and continues to be) terrible.  Awful.  Cringe worthy.

There is no two ways about this, and I have always known that my handwriting is not the best.  Even when I slowly write things out, I still look at it in amazement at how bad it looks.  My wife makes fun of my signature and even when I take my time writing that it doesn't look great.  Whenever someone comments on my handwriting, I like to tell them the story of my fifth grade teacher (Mrs. Bump).  Granted I don't remember the minute details, all I remember is this one thing.  She said my handwriting was chicken scratch.  Looking back at it, it's funny because it's true but I'm wondering if it was at that point where I was like 'fuck it, this will be how I write from now on.'

Here are some comments from elementary school teachers regarding my handwriting:

• 'Needs improvement and additional practice.' -Mrs. Evans (1st grade) first semester
• 'Showing improvement, but still needs some additional practice.' -Mrs. Evans (1st grade) second semester
• Penmanship grades B, B-, B+, B-.  -Mrs. Campbell (2nd grade)
• Penmanship grades C, B- (Improving), B+, B.  -Mrs. Ware (3rd grade)
• Penmanship grades C-, C+, C, B-.  -Mrs. Bullock (4th grade)
• 'Breathe' (referring to spacing on my cursive writing). -Mrs. Bullock (4th grade)
• Penmanship grades C+, C-, C, D (written in black, pressed hard into the report card).  -Mrs. Bump (5th grade)

Obviously we see a trend of little to no improvement over the course of five years.  In fact, there was quite a sharp decline in fifth grade.  Penmanship has always been the least of my worries.  I struggled all throughout school in subjects like math and science and passing subjects like that was a bit more important than writing clearly.  Let's just not talk about me almost failing math my junior year of high school.  That's another can I don't really want to open.  Like ever.  

Stories With Notes

'Without music, life would be a mistake.' -Friedrich Nietzsche

To avoid the terribleness that is happening these days, I listen to more music.  More than usual.  Before last November I listened to a number of political podcasts.  I don't listen to them much these days.  It's just too infuriating and stress inducing.  It's one thing to have a politician in power that you don't agree with, it's another thing entirely to have a 'politician' in power that doesn't understand anything that is going on.  I'll still listen to them, but it gets to the point when I just can't anymore.  I hit that point most weeks by Tuesday.  

To fill the time and space in my drives to and from work, I listen to a lot of music.  As such, I have been talking to a lot of people about the types of music or artists they listen to in an attempt to expand my musical library.  While I was talking to some people yesterday, I asked if they had listened to a particular album that came out recently.  I was given a strange look as if my eyes were bleeding.  'You buy albums still?'  I responded 'of course I do, I'm old.'  I don't mean actual CDs, I buy them electronically.  I know that streaming music is more popular and commonplace today than it was even six or seven years ago, I just like owning music.  Sure, it's more expensive to do it this way, but this is my 'old person' mentality.  

There's plenty of times when I just listen to an album over and over again.  Part of it is because the music is connecting with me other times it's because I'm listening to the stories the album is telling.  While it is not true for every single album tells a continuous story, there are plenty that have themes.  One of the wonderful things about songs and music is that it can be interpreted in different ways.  Sometimes the story is obvious, but when you have a song that is ambiguous it leads to conversations.  While you think a song is about one thing, a friend might think it's about something completely different.  If you have that discussion, you'll listen to the song in a completely different way.  

That is the advantage of buying an entire album.  You can listen to it all over and over again and pull the stories out.  Just hearing one single from an album you don't get the full experience.  Sure there are going to be exceptions.  There are going to be albums that don't tell full stories or any stories at all.  It can just be a collection of songs.  This is one of the things I miss about buying a physical CD, the book with all the lyrics typed out.  It was great, you could listen to the songs while reading the words.  Sometimes with songs that I have downloaded, I'll listen to them and basically wonder what is happening.  I don't always listen in depth to individual songs, I just enjoy them.  If you have one song linking to the next and next and so on, don't you pay a little more attention?  Maybe? 

I don't know.  Maybe I'm just getting too old and want the music and songs to mean more than they actually are.  Or maybe they don't write them the way they use to.

Cart of Life

It's not that I have a coffee addiction, it's just that I enjoy it on a daily basis.  An entire pot of it.  I didn't start drinking coffee until I was in my mid 20s, and it was then that I found it to be wonderfully delicious and an even better decision.  Since then, I have had coffee almost every morning.  It is just part of the routine now.  Wake up, drink a cup, pour the rest in my thermos for work, and enjoy throughout the day.  It's all natural too, so it's much better than drinking things like pop or energy drinks, right? 

A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on May 7, 2017 at 7:03am PDT

Once we moved into our house, I set up a nice little cart for my coffee and all things attached with said coffee.  Coffee beans, grinder, maker, filters, a place for my cups and thermos.  I do love my coffee.  Some might say I have a problem, but they're wrong.  

Random Finds

The cool thing about going into a second hand bookstore is that you never know what you'll find.  When you go into one, you do know what you are going to get.  That musty smell.  You know it.  It's usually a little bit darker.  And every once in a great while, you'll find a bookstore with a cat in it.  Those are the best ones.  The great thing about second hand bookstores are usually locally owned and help drive the local economy.  There has been a great drive to buy local across the country recently, and that is pretty cool.

We have yet to find a cool second hand bookstore in our new city, but I'm always on the look out.  When I find my way into a second hand store, there are a few things I look for.  Classic novels.  They're called classics for a reason and even if you don't end up liking the book at least you can say that you read it.  Or is that just a pretentious thing to do?  You might find a book that is a classic that you end up falling in love with even though you had little to no idea what it was about.  For example, I found a copy of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' many years ago in a second hand store.  I had heard of the book and the character and took advantage of finding it.  I enjoyed the book.  I'm glad I bought it and it is still on my bookshelf.  However, I don't know if I would have bought it if I had seen it at a normal full price bookstore. 

Second hand bookstores also give you the opportunity to find an author or genre you might not have ever seen or given a thought to pick up.  I started reading more fantasy books this way.  You can maybe find a trilogy or a two part book series and can buy the entire set for fairly cheap.  I've bought some books that ended up not being very good, but when you only pay four or five dollars for them, it's not as disappointing as if you had paid full price.  Not that long ago, my wife and I made our way up to a Half Price Books.  It's a nationwide chain of second hand bookstores.  You can also sell your used books there for credit if you so desire.  I found a book called 'The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared'.  The main reason it caught my eye?  The interesting title.  So far, I'm about one hundred and twenty pages into it.  It's a fun book and so far I am glad I found it. 

Find a used bookstore.  Take a chance on a book or a genre you wouldn't normally buy.  You never know what you will find.  You might go down a genre rabbit hole you wouldn't have gone down.